Wheelchair users need to go for outdoor activities in their daily life. Umbrellas are usually brought with them to avoid getting wet under the inclement weather. However, without another person's help it is extremely inconvenient, if not impossible, for a user to open and hold an umbrella while pushing the wheelchair.
Several patents have discussed how to attach an umbrella to a wheelchair so that the wheelchair user's hands are free for tasks other than holding the umbrella. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,609,175 describes an umbrella holder that is supported by both thighs of a wheelchair user. When it is in use, a user is able to put the shaft of an open umbrella into the holder and use his hands to push the wheelchair. U.S. Pat. No. 5,634,650 shows a mechanism for an umbrella to be mounted on the frame of a wheelchair. Inventors in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,791,761, 6,378,539, and 7,690,389 disclose different ways of holding an umbrella to a wheelchair by either installing a holder to the wheelchair or modifying the shaft structure of the umbrella. However, umbrellas showed in these inventions are not an enclosing system so that it can protect only part of a wheelchair user's body from rain or wind. None of them is able to cover the user's body from the top to the bottom when he sits on the wheelchair. As an open system, these umbrellas are unable to prevent bugs from interfering wheelchair users in an outdoor environment.
It is therefore an objective of this invention to provide a protective cover that is distinct from umbrellas described in the preceding paragraph and can be attached to a wheelchair. It is a further objective of this invention to prepare a cover that is used to protect a wheelchair user's body from undesired outdoor conditions such as rain, wind, bugs, or sun, yet does not prevent the user or attendant from pushing the wheelchair.